The Storms Named After Us
by Liberty Love and Roses
Summary: They are so unpredictable, crazy and destructive that their worlds start to crumble with every strike— AshMisty (Pokeshipping). Non-linear.
1. 175: this is not the beginning

**Hello, and welcome to this unstructured disaster of which I have the nerve to call a fanfiction!**

 **Here's a little background on how this came to be: this was a story idea I had a loooooong time ago (3-ish years ago) that I found whilst organising all my documents into folders on my laptop. I decided, in honour of my younger self, to edit this and upload it here (seeing as I had writer's block for the last few days, I thought this would be a good idea to kick some inspiration back into myself!).**

 **I don't know why in the world I wanted it to be non-linear, seeing as I despised writing things non-linearly simply because I wasn't good at it (I still amn't) and because I forget to tie everything else up in the end (heck, I don't even know if I've tied everything up in this), but even though I am no good at writing things non-linear, I decided I wanted to keep things as similar as possible. I even kept the summary the same as it was when I first wrote it! (Though it doesn't really fit, but meh).**

 **Um, so yeah, you've been warned.**

 **Behold, this train-wreck!**

 **I wouldn't expect this too be fantabulous if I were you, but I would appreciate it if you left a review of your thoughts.**

 **On to the story we go!**

 **Edit (18/3/19): Just some minor changes**

* * *

 _The Storms Named After Us_

* * *

(175)

When Misty wakes, her heart is restless.

Sunlight filters through her window and diffuses across her room in a kaleidoscope of soft golds and pretty pinks, and she can hear the kricketunes chirp as spring breathes life into Cerulean.

(Spring, the season of new beginnings, the fresh start she needs to feel alive again— except Misty is sick of salvation and she doesn't want to move on.)

She pulls the curtains closed and trudges to the living room.

The world around her drowns out in the growl and click of the kettle, the grumble and swish of water as she brews herself a coffee; the clinking of metal against her cup, her sisters' chatter, the low murmurs of the television in the background.

She continues stirring her coffee. They're watching the news, supposedly. She's not really that interested, but—

—Misty looks up when she hears his name, and her heart is restless.

The Chosen One, smile light but eyes ablaze. _Hero_.

She spills the coffee over her arm but she doesn't care, desperately fumbling for the remote despite her sisters' complaints.

Blue meets brown, a world apart, and the TV screen zaps to black. Her heart is only heavier.

(Part of her still wonders if they're both waiting for a storm to come, to sweep them off their feet— but it's too late. It's always too late. There's nothing that their flames left untouched, and now they are both smouldering.)


	2. 156: a mothim drawn to a flame

(156)

"I was tired of waiting," Misty says, matching her gaze to his. "I still am."

"Then stop," Ash responds. "I never asked you to wait, Mist."

She manages a small smile (it isn't kind).

She is like a mothim drawn to a flame, except Misty isn't a damn bug and Ash is very much a flame, burning out of existence in his heroic innocence.

The thought makes her insides writhe because—


	3. 1: they are storms

**A/N: Teehee, this is the cheesy sounding bit I warned you about (one of many).**

* * *

(1)

Misty and Ash are storms together, as opposed to fire; they are more powerful, more passionate in comparison.

It suits them more than fire, anyway; she is rain with her finesse in battling with water-types, and he is lightning with his most trusted partner being an electric rodent.

This is the consensus between them, and they assure each other through silence that they won't let their troubles (the fire) burn them.

Yet, when they least expect it, their world is set alight.


	4. 42: the chosen one

(42)

"Mist, your boyfriend's on TV!" Lily yells, and Misty almost spits out her coffee as she erupts into a coughing fit.

"Ash isn't my boyfriend," Misty snaps, clearing her throat. She plops down beside Lily on the leather couch but makes sure to avoid her sister's gaze, sipping on her drink as a distraction.

A teasing smirk snakes onto Lily's lips. " _Oh?_ I never mentioned Ash, though?"

"You—" Misty whips her head round to face her sister, cheeks flushed, mouth agape as she struggles for a retort. "You're mistaken," she returns weakly, scowling as she slumps back against the couch.

Lily laughs. "Oh, don't frown, baby sis; it ruins your skin."

"Whatever," the red-head dismisses. "Anyways, what's he done now?"

Lily pouts, curling a strand of her magenta hair, and replies, "He's saved another city from this crazy Pokémon again. Jumped off a tower and everything just to calm it down."

Misty pauses, nods slowly, staring at the flickering TV screen as she presses her lips into a thin line against the rim of her cup. The skin between her brows ripple as she draws them together and her fingers agitate the buttons on the remote as she powers the TV off.

Lily doesn't care, and instead, continues: "It must be tough, being the Chosen One. He's been forced into becoming the world's hero."

Misty takes larger gulps of her coffee, even though it's now scalding her tongue, and she hums in bitter agreement.


	5. 159: salvation is not a saviour

(159)

(But salvation never saved the hero.)


	6. 6: like petrol catching fire

(6)

She is furious.

"Six whole months, Ash Ketchum, and not one call! Any excuses?"

The wall beside him cries chunks of cement on impact of Misty's mallet, and Ash dares to gulp.

"I was busy," goes his meek response, vague and obscure, even though he knows Misty hates how he doesn't elaborate. But what would change even if he did? She probably knows the truth anyways— it's impossible not to know— but Ash wishes that she didn't, and pretends that she doesn't, for his sake (for _their_ sakes).

He gulps again as her blue eyes narrow, as her coral lips part.

She breathes in.

(She's giving up.)

"You know what?" Misty sighs, setting her mallet down. "I need to cool down. I'm heading outside." She grabs an elastic off the counter and pulls her fiery hair into a side ponytail.

His eyes trail after her feet as they sink slightly into the wooly carpet before they slip into a pair of crisp white trainers (left foot first, then right), and Ash watches as the crisp white splashes into puddles, observing the wet spread across the white like petrol catching fire.

Ash follows suit.


	7. 155: cannibalise

(155)

He can feel her nails engrave crescents into his flesh and he feels the psychological scars cannibalise his body until he is raw, like the desperation in her eyes—

and when she opens her mouth, he is too scared to listen

—of beautiful blue.

(What beautiful blue eyes Misty has.)


	8. 8: anything for her smile

**A/N: Another cheesy thing, teehee.**

* * *

(8)

When they hear the thunder clap behind them, see the flash of lightning border the horizons, feel the heavy rain saturate their bones through their skins, they embrace Mother Nature's disorientation, and they give it a home in their souls.

Her eyes flutter shut as she indulges in the pleasures of rain, which runs in rivulets down her skin, leaving behind a cool trail in its wake.

Her eyelashes, like nets made of gossamer, catch silver fragments of dew. They are like diamonds, except Misty doesn't suit diamonds, but in the rain, she epitomises elegance— the maiden who has an affair with nature; life's lover— so perhaps the dew doesn't look like diamonds after all.

 _It would be quite nice_ , Ash thinks, _if we could make rings out of dew because you would love that and I would love loving you love a ring of dew._

Her eyes electrify his body when she opens them and graces his gaze with hers. He wonders, in a frenzy, whether he had been staring for too long, and is mildly mortified at the thought.

But Misty offers him a pacified smile, inviting him to accompany her across knee-deep puddles.

And he joins her, even though he is wearing jeans, even though the damp fabric clings to his skin uncomfortably.

But it's okay, he decides.

Anything for her smile.


	9. 7: ethereal

**A/N: So much cheese that my house is now infested with mice (or should I say ratattas?).**

* * *

(7)

She is red, the devil reincarnated, with liquid fire pulsing through her veins and hair pigmented a burning orange.

But her essence is blue, and you can see it in her eyes, when she dances through the storms, with halos atop her head.

She is ethereal, and he isn't sure exactly when he had fallen for her.


	10. 9: paranoid

**A/N: I swear, this is so cringey and cheesy. But it's cute, right? RIGHT? Appease my younger self please.**

* * *

(9)

He presses his forehead against hers, and she is still, rigid, surprised.

Ash ignores the wisps of vibrant orange flames tickling his skin as Misty breathes out tentatively. Her breaths are peculiar to him; they are loud, slow and sharp, as if she's intentionally trying to catch them.

Inhale. Ten seconds. Exhale.

"I dislike breathing on people," she mutters, her fingers melting into his. "I get a little paranoid over it."

There is a silence between them, where words become lost even in the midst of their perfect communion, where her mind is drunk on possibilities (the "what if"s)—

(Inhale. Seven seconds. Exhale.)

— and Ash thinks it's such a shame because, _'It would make kissing you a lot harder.'_

But:

"Mhmmmm," is the mundane response he settles on.


	11. 17: don't burn

**A/N:**

 **Edit (13/2/19): Just a few minor changes**

* * *

(17)

"Chosen One, huh?"

His body jolts when she mentions it.

(He can hear it, almost, the sound of his few remaining wishes crumbling and shattering, like all the rest, the feeling of losing the one thing had been so desperately clinging onto.)

The air suddenly tastes like venom to Ash, and he wonders if it's his own.

He turns to her, his smile carved from plastic, and he nods in acknowledgement. "Yup!" The word slides off his tongue with easy, energetic fluency, and for a brief moment, Ash wonders since when he has been so good at pretending.

Yet Misty isn't convinced.

"What happened to "Pokémon Master"?" She sips on her coffee (it's always coffee), and Ash adds on more layers of plastic to his smile until it glistens (it's a revolting, manufactured shine).

"I'm working on it," he assures her, but his visage darkens and his voice is tinged with a poignancy that arouses Misty's suspicion as he says, "But I'm a hero now, too."

Misty is about to say something, but she, on accident, consumes too much coffee in one go, and it burns her tongue (it's too frequent an occurrence that Misty debates whether she should give up coffee altogether, since she hasn't the patience to actually let it cool).

Ash, whilst suspending the cup from the red-head, laughs a little, saying, "Don't burn yourself!"

It's funny, Misty thinks, because she wants to say the same thing to him.


	12. 38: promises

(38)

"You're leaving?" Misty asks, standing by his patio, eying the suitcase Ash is carrying, and Pikachu, sensing the abrupt burst of tension in the air, scurries back into the house.

Ash manages a guilty smile, and Misty is enlightened with the knowledge that he had no intentions of telling her.

When she asks, he confirms, and she bites down on her lip until the coral colour blanches. Yet, she doesn't ask why— hell, she wants to scream the question to his face, but aggravating matters related to Ash brings more harm than good— and simply tells him to come home soon.

Heroes have no homes, Ash wants to argue, but he keeps his lips sealed and presses them into a fine line.

But Misty knows him, and she can decipher the words from his eyes of chocolate and broken promises, and tells him, boldly, "You have a home in me."

He is surprised, mildly, and chuckles. "Promise?" His laugh is insecure, his gaze in need of reassurance.

She smiles warmly. "Promise."


	13. 160: ashes and mist

**A/N: I hope y'all notice the play on their names**

* * *

(160)

And this time, he walks away for good, vanishing into the mist, the aftermath of the storm, and she is left behind in his ashes.


	14. 24: proximity

**A/N: uuuuuh... :)**

* * *

(24)

It is the spontaneous slip of his tongue:

"I love you."

Misty almost spills her coffee (she couldn't forgo the drink in the end), Pikachu and Togepi glance at each other, eyes wide open, before quietly shuffling away from the room, and Ash takes a moment to let the mortification settle in.

He is suddenly redder than the vibrant hue of his cap.

"I-I-I, um, uh, I mean-" Ash splutters, trying to manufacture a justification for his abrupt confession. But when he ultimately results with nothing, he throws his arms up in the air and pulls down his cap until his face is concealed.

"You love me?" Misty echoes in disbelief, setting her cup down on the small table by the couch as she feels her cheeks burn. "You better not be joking, Ash Ketchum, or else I'll whip out my mallet and obliterate you."

Ash gulps and frantically gestures his hands as he shifts to the furthest end of the couch they are sitting on. "I'm not joking! I do love you," Ash says, but then an excuse finally finds it's way into words (thank Arceus, he thinks), "as a friend!"

Misty's face falls for a moment before it is dyed a deeper hue of crimson. She suddenly emits a masculine groan (it takes Ash by surprise) and her face is drowned into her palms.

"Don't do that to me, you stupid idiot," she moans, slightly disappointed, mostly embarrassed due to her misconception of his words (though it isn't really a misconception). "Idiot. Moron. Stupid, idiotic moron. I will kill you."

She repeats the words like an ominous chant, and Ash tries to suppress a shiver.

"Sorry for misleading you," he apologises, inching closer and trying to remove her hands from her face. He finds himself struggling, because Misty is too stubborn and absolutely refuses to detach her palms, nails clawing deeper into her face as a defensive mechanism.

But when he finally manages, he sees how red she's turned, and consequently, he goes red too.

There is a silence between them, and Ash notices that his thigh is now too close to hers, that their arms are touching, that there is a subtle ring of viridian around the pupil of Misty's eyes that he's never noticed before and that her lips have a faint fragrance of coffee and vanilla.

They are too close for comfort.

But neither reject the proximity.

"So," Misty starts awkwardly, catching her breath again, "you love me as a friend?"

Ash nods slowly in confirmation. "Yup." Then, because adrenaline and his heart beating unhealthily fast kindles a certain daringness in him, he asks, "Do you?"

This causes the red-head to blush and avert her gaze. "I love you too," she says, hushed, ( _damn it_ , Ash thinks as she frenzies his mind), "as a friend."

They are both more embarrassed than they should be, and Ash decides he doesn't want to resist the temptation anymore.

So he leans in and kisses her.


	15. 39: a certain fire

(39)

(There is a certain fire in both of their eyes.)


	16. 157: five years

(157)

"It's been five years, Ash," Misty reminds him bitterly, still smiling. "You never came back. You promised you'd come home."

He looks guilty all of a sudden, and Misty is tired of it because he's always guilty, yet he never redeems himself. He never tries.

He opens his mouth to speak, to defend himself—

"Mist—" except Ash has nothing to say, no excuses, nothing (or maybe he's hiding something, the way he always used to— Misty can't tell, anymore), so he only says, "I'm sorry."

"Aren't you always?" Misty knows she is being cruel to him, but she almost can't help but delight in the way his face contorts with pain as he averts his gaze, the way his hand reaches out but contracts, the way his body stiffens as she liberates him from her grip. But it's justified, Misty reassures herself, because Ash is even more cruel.

He presses his lips into a fine line. "I never asked you to wait for me, Misty," he repeats, and Misty suppresses the urge to slap him. Her fists clench.

"I promised that you had a home in me. You promised you'd come home," Misty says. "You may not have asked me to wait, but Ash, you know me. You know I can't break my promises."

He feels the guilt concentrate into a pool of venom on his tongue, and he swallows it, lets it intoxicate him, lets it burn the Ash Ketchum Misty is so familiar with and leave behind only the Chosen One.

When he reconnects their gaze, he can hear the thunder rumble from behind them and he says:

"And you know I always break mine."

The rain begins to fall.


	17. 26: friendly kisses and insomniacs

(26)

"Is that a friendly kiss, Ash?" Misty asks as Ash sifts his fingers through her orange hair (like ribbons of dishevelled fire, Ash thinks briefly).

He smiles against her lips (his typical, cheesy grin), and replies, in the same flirtatious manner Misty had asked, "You tell me, Mist."

The rains sings love songs against the window pane as lightning illuminates the skies.

And they are insomniacs, only for tonight.


	18. 158: a cowardly hero

**A/N: This is the last one!**

 **Edit (21/12/18): Just fleshing it out a teensy bit more**

* * *

(158)

Misty feels like Ash has torn her heart out and incinerated it.

"I am the Chosen One; my life isn't only mine, but the world's. You need to understand that," Ash tells her softly. Her eyes widen and it's like he can almost see her heart bleed hues of blue— the same as her eyes, except it is not beautiful. It is darker, eclipsed by feelings forlorn, like the depths of an ocean, like she's drowning.

Ash looks down, away from her eyes, away from her. It breaks him, too; he has been forced into a destiny he doesn't want, into a life that deprives him of his dreams.

He clenches his fist (and if he could change things, he would, and Arceus knows how desperately he prays for it, but he _can't_ ).

"I don't care how many times you have to leave, Ash, if that's what you mean. If I know you'll come back, I can wait," Misty persists. Perhaps it's pathetic, but Misty is helplessly, hopelessly in love with him, and she can't _stop_. She wants to believe in a future where they are together and happy and at peace, dancing through storms like they used to— is that so wrong of her? Is it so impossible?

A blaze ignites in his eyes when he meets her gaze again, desperate, harrowing, torn, and his lip quivers.

"No!" he says, almost too quick but resolute in a way that shakes her. "You can't. Even if do I come back— and I can't, you know I can't— I'll have to leave soon after—"

"Then I'll go with you! It'll be like when we were travelling together—"

"You _can't,_ " he intercepts, gulping away the gnawing ache in this throat. "You have a life here; you can't throw it all away. Not for me. Not for anyone."

A silence hangs between them.

Ash breathes in. "The world needs me, Mist," he mutters, angling away from her. "If you wait, you'll be waiting forever. I can't do that to you." He is preparing to abandon her, to simply walk away.

Misty can't— won't— accept it. She inhales the cold air, feels it freeze her liquescent, bleeding heart where the ice slips into the cracks and threads it together with a painfully thick, suffocating weave.

The ice transitions into her voice, and Misty is almost surprised by how cold she sounds.

"Why not?" Misty laughs, cynical and aching. "You let me wait five years without warning me that you never planned on coming back. Surely, you can let me wait forever longer with the knowledge that you'd return to me eventually, can't you?"

Ash swerves his head back and says, almost defiantly, in his defence, "That was different! I didn't want to see you hurt."

"And what?" Misty grits her teeth. "Am I not hurt now?"

Ash turns away again. "I'm sorry, Mist."

Misty is tired of his excuses.

"Look at me, Ash Ketchum," Misty seethes. When he doesn't move, doesn't turn back to look at her, she throws a spare pokéball at his head to capture his attention. It's successful, and in the moment he stops, she storms up to him.

He can feel it in his bones, the slap he receives on his cheek, rippling throughout his body until time comes to a standstill.

There is a silence.

"You're a coward." Her voice is unnervingly calm, and Ash no longer understands how Misty feels. It scares him, because he used to know her so well, but now he can't remember the feel of her fingertips, how tranquil she looks when she dances through storms, how she always holds her breath when she is in extremely close proximity of someone, her obsession with coffee and that she has a subtle ring of viridian around her pupil. He never will remember.

"No." When he smiles, it is heavy with regret. "I am a hero."

* * *

 **Uh, well this is the last one, it seems! So uh, yeah, not great, I know, but thanks for reading. If the story didn't make sense, try reading all the chapters in order of the numbers to see if that helps.**

 **Yeah, so OOC characters, overtly dramatic, probably ridden with cliches! But regardless, it was a good way to kick me out of writer's block with a past project! I recommend you guys trying it too! I'd love to read them. :)**

 **And yeah, no, 'tis not a happy ending. Even in order.**

 **I warned you I sucked at non-linear.**

 **Please review and tell me if you find any glaring errors! I will fix them! Constructive criticism would still be welcome, and both my younger self and I would appreciate it!**

 _~Adieu!_

 _X's and O's,_

 _Liberty!_

 _xxx_


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